Capturing Cubone's Mother: Marowak (Ghost) lvl30 Pokemon Tower, Lavender Town

[Cloud9Skywalker]

So, I have been playing Pokemon Leaf Green (cartridge) for the first time (I played through the original just not the remake). I just got up to the part where you encounter Cubone's mother Marowak (ghost) and although there is no legitimate genuine way to catch her in-game. I still want to capture this special Pokemon! ("Gotta catch em' all", right?)
Is there any way to capture Cubone's mother Marowak? Ive been told and know there isn't a genuine way to do it, but outside of normal gameplay possibly through cheats, is there a way?
Maybe through cheating devices or possibly PKHex? Is it worth trying to capture this Pokemon, can it potentially corrupt my save? Just curious, because I have seen videos on Youtube of people doing it so I wanted to give it a shot.

[theSLAYER]

If I recall correctly, there may not be a legitimate way to do so, without cheats.

We have a file of it here:

and a page listing how it's done:

 

[Uravity]

I recall there being ways to skip her battle entirely, but I could never find a way (legitimately or otherwise) to capture this Pokémon. But now that you mentioned watching videos of people actually doing so, I'm really curious about the whole thing... I mean, I doubt they have bothered programming anything special on a Pokémon that you weren't supposed to capture, but I had been amazed before by the kind of things they did include despite you not being supposed to access.

I will give those links a try

Edited June 29, 2017 by Uravity

[Cloud9Skywalker]

Yeah I have only begun to scratch the surface of using PKHex. I'm really looking forward to all the possibilities and options I'm going to have playing my game cartridges alongside using PKHex to "Catch em' all".

This community is filled with a bigger database than I thought, it really prove useful very soon. I'm only waiting on my Flashcart to finally arrive in the mail! ?

[BlackShark]

Actually it is possible to force Marowak to be a catchable Pokemon.
If you take a look at the script with a script editor like PKSV you will find these lines that initiate the battle:

battle MAROWAK 30 NONE
special BATTLE_UNCATCHABLE

As you can see there's a special command that literally makes it uncatchable (iirc I've seen this command called BATTLE_GHOST somewhere else). In the ROM this special command is "25 56".
This Marowak is a special encounter so I looked how other static encounters were initiated. Like Articuno:

battle ARTICUNO 50 NONE
...
special BATTLE_PIXELLATE

BATTLE_PIXELLATE special command is "25 38" in the ROM.
So I replaced the special from Marowak with the one of Articuno and I was able to actually catch her! You can't get past her though, the battle will just start again if you try. I think the game is waiting for the BATTLE_UNCATCHABLE command here...

Here are some AR codes to modify the script. I haven't seen anything weird happening besides the fact that you can't get past her.
Better keep a backup of your save and use at your own risk though!

FireRed v1.1 (ENG)
D54097A1 AE4FF81E
5B9A790A 60FEDA53

FireRed v1.0 (ENG)
E49463DD 2CDEAD13
5B9A790A 60FEDA53

LeafGreen v1.1 (ENG)
9D585DF4 811D00A0
5B9A790A 60FEDA53

LeafGreen v1.0 (ENG)
C792223A 639A4C84
5B9A790A 60FEDA53

 

[Cloud9Skywalker]

30 minutes ago, BlackShark said:

Actually it is possible to force Marowak to be a catchable Pokemon.

I had a feeling there was a means with editing the script of the battle somehow or utilizing PKHex like @theSLAYER posted above. I read and had an oversight in a video I saw mentioning, doing this was one of the possibilities in capturing her.

39 minutes ago, BlackShark said:

So I replaced the special from Marowak with the one of Articuno and I was able to actually catch her! You can't get past her though, the battle will just start again if you try. I think the game is waiting for the BATTLE_UNCATCHABLE command here...

Outstanding.. Nice work @BlackShark! I heard that she doesn't have a rear sprite only a front facing battle sprite, lol..

43 minutes ago, BlackShark said:

Here are some AR codes to modify the script. I haven't seen anything weird happening besides the fact that you can't get past her.

How do I know which version of the game I have (I have LeafGreen)? Like I mentioned, I am still awaiting on my flashcart so I can extract the ROM and SAV files. So I'm basically limited at the moment. 

Is there a difference between using PKHex or AR/GS codes in order to obtain Pokemon?
I need to figure the whole PKHex thing out. It all sounds super fun!
 

[Uravity]

Quote

So I replaced the special from Marowak with the one of Articuno and I was able to actually catch her! You can't get past her though, the battle will just start again if you try. I think the game is waiting for the BATTLE_UNCATCHABLE command here...

Can't you force the battle to be over by using a pokedoll? I have seen people avoiding this encounter by simple doing that.

[BlackShark]

9 minutes ago, Cloud9Skywalker said:

Outstanding.. Nice work @BlackShark! I heard that she doesn't have a rear sprite only a front facing battle sprite, lol..

The Ghost probably doesn't have a rear sprite but Marowak is just like any regular Marowak.

 

11 minutes ago, Cloud9Skywalker said:

Is there a difference between using PKHex or AR/GS codes in order to obtain Pokemon?
I need to figure the whole PKHex thing out. It all sounds super fun!

What kind of difference? If you want to affect wild encounters like this one you have to use AR codes as PKHeX can't do that.

In general I would say PKHeX is easier to use if you have access to your save file. With PKHeX you can edit multiple Pokemon at once and then just re-inject the edited save. With AR codes you have to reboot and activate a new code for each Pokemon as the number of code lines are limited. Also it's easier to mess things up by using codes.

 

16 minutes ago, Cloud9Skywalker said:

How do I know which version of the game I have (I have LeafGreen)?

Boot up your game and wait until the GameFreak logo shows up. In v1.1 "presents" is written beneath it while in v1.0 it's missing.

Or check Pidgey's Pokedex entry. In v1.0 it's species name is just "Tiny" instead of "Tiny Bird".

8 minutes ago, Uravity said:

Can't you force the battle to be over by using a pokedoll? I have seen people avoiding this encounter by simple doing that.

You can do that but it's just the same as running away from Marowak. You have to defeat her to release her soul and get past.
Maybe this was different in Gen 1/2 but I'm not sure about that.

[Uravity]

15 minutes ago, BlackShark said:

You can do that but it's just the same as running away from Marowak. You have to defeat her to release her soul and get past.
Maybe this was different in Gen 1/2 but I'm not sure about that.

The game does treat Marowak as defeated if you do this in Gen 1, but the only time I have seen this working is while forcing the encounter without having the Sliph Scope, so do take what I say with a pinch of salt, as it's not something you could normally do. Still, quite interesting to witness and I was hoping it was left in.

[Cloud9Skywalker]

13 minutes ago, Uravity said:

The game does treat Marowak as defeated if you do this in Gen 1, but the only time I have seen this working is while forcing the encounter without having the Sliph Scope, so do take what I say with a pinch of salt, as it's not something you could normally do. Still, quite interesting to witness and I was hoping it was left in.

Well, when I first had the encounter I was not expecting it at all so after failing an attempt at trying to catch her (lol) I then just selected run, saved the game and attempted to check if she was still there which she was. So the event is definitely still active in my game.

35 minutes ago, BlackShark said:

Boot up your game and wait until the GameFreak logo shows up. In v1.1 "presents" is written beneath it while in v1.0 it's missing.

I just checked, it v1.1. I'm guessing it's a better/updated version.

Edited June 29, 2017 by Cloud9Skywalker
commented quote

[Uravity]

2 hours ago, Cloud9Skywalker said:

Well, when I first had the encounter I was not expecting it at all so after failing an attempt at trying to catch her (lol) I then just selected run, saved the game and attempted to check if she was still there which she was. So the event is definitely still active in my game.

Yeah, the event won't go away until the conditions (aka defeating her) are fulfilled. However, this glitch or whatever I described above makes the game "think" you won the battle. In all honesty, it's not so much of a deal but, you know...

And yeah, I remember wasting tons of Pokéballs trying to catch that Marowak when I was a kid playing for the first time. Fun times

[Cloud9Skywalker]

4 hours ago, BlackShark said:

What kind of difference? If you want to affect wild encounters like this one you have to use AR codes as PKHeX can't do that.

Well, what I meant was. Originality in the Pokemon, is one method proven to show more authenticity in the Pokemon than the other.
(e.g. GS/AR Pokemon vs PKHex Pokemon) is there any difference at all between the two as far as anything goes? (Stats, Originality, Trading, Leveling)